Frequent Miler on the Air - Should you plan now for future travel? | Ep53 | 7-4-20

Episode Date: July 4, 2020

Subscribe and give us a like if you enjoy this episode. Timestamps and links below. 00:30 Reader Feedback: Were we too hard on IHG? 9:30 What crazy thing did Citi do this week? Our post about the minimum spend extension: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/citis-turn-use-prestige-credit-at-supermarkets-restaurants-more-time-to-meet-spend/ Report of no extension: https://grabamile.boardingarea.com/2020/06/citiextension2020/ 16:21: Chase adds temporary benefits Link: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/chase-summertime-bonuses-on-sapphire-reserve-and-preferred/ 30:23 Is the Radisson 5K promotion worth mattress running? https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/radisson-rewards-earn-5000-bonus-points-per-stay-through-end-of-2020/ 39:19 Is this a good time to collect points for future travel? Related post about manufacturing free nights: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/manufacturing-free-nights-hyatt-hilton-marriott/ 48:03 Card Talk Commercial Intervention https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/traveling-with-six-credit-cards-for-four-a-card-talk-intervention/ 52:20 Is this a good time to book future travel given waived change fees and increased availability? 2 credit cards for a European vacation: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2-credit-card-guide-european-adventure/ First class availability post: https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/book-the-worlds-best-first-class-now-fly-next-year/ 1:02:20 Question of the Week: When can you get a Capital One bonus again? What should Nick do about a Capital One upgrade offer?

Welcome to Frequent Miler on the air. Today's topic is whether we should plan now for future travel. You know, most of us aren't traveling now, but a lot of award space is available now for the future, for next year. Should we be doing it now? And we'll get into the details of that. First, of course, feedback time.

Feedback, reader feedback. Always interested in hearing what the people have to say. What do they have to say? Yes, today's feedback comes from Tony. Tony, all right. And Tony starts with, absolutely love the podcast and your work. I always like feedback that starts this way.

Right? Right. I'm tempted to just stop there. Right. Thanks, Tony. Bye. I'm afraid there's a but coming somewhere, Tony. You're scaring me here.

Go ahead. There's a though. Oh, okay, though. He says, have to say though. You talk poorly about IHG too much. People that stay at IHG are not just business travelers. Come on, Nick. Not just business travelers.

See, I asked for this. I told you. I said, Nick, not just business travelers. See, I asked for this. I told you, I said, IHG people call me out. So this is, there you go. I appreciate you taking the test, Tony. Tony's calling you out. He says, as Greg mentions, that's me, Greg. Kempton is an outstanding property. IHG has reliably great properties in a ton of locations, including internationally. And that is a real strength. And I'm going to just, as an aside, say I have gotten a lot of feedback that even things like Holiday Inn are supposedly spectacular in China, for example. So I haven't been to any Holiday Inns outside of the U.S., so I can't speak to that, but other people have said so.

I have. I've stated a couple, so I can verify that. Okay, there you go. So, reliably great properties at tunnel locations, including international. Oh, yeah, I already said that. And he ended that sentence with, and that is a real strength. If you just need a place to lie down, the Holiday Inn Express is there. If you want something to do, if you want to do something nice, there is Kempton and some decent Intercontinentals. I really do appreciate you talking about them a bit in depth in the episode though. Dave was talking about last week's episode where we talked about those. One last point. I think maybe you focus too much on free breakfast. This is the cheapest meal of the day. Maybe just my opinion, but it simply does not move the needle

in terms of travel in most cases. Certainly not with respect to many of the other things you discuss. Thank you again. Interesting points that Tony makes there. So, you know, first of all, I got to say Tony is right that many IHG properties are much nicer overseas than they are in the United States. So I'll definitely give you that. I remember one time I stayed at a $3 a night hostel on like a mattress made of straw in somewhere in India. I think it was in Agra, India. And my goodness, it was a rough, rough, rough night. And the next night, we stayed at the Holiday Inn in Jaipur. And it was like staying at the Ritz, let me tell you. So wait a minute, back up. Was it really nice nice or was it just compared to the cave that you it's hard for me to say now but it certainly was at the time it was like an oasis like i

can't i can't trust you after like walking in and feeling like i was on top of the world i was like wow it's it smells nice here so so no i I know that there are indeed nice Holiday Inns, and there are some that aren't as nice, just like every other chain. I think the thing of it is that all of the chains, I shouldn't say all of the chains, most of the major chains are more towards the spectacular end overseas than they are in the United States. I think that's generally true.

I mean, if you say in any Marriott or Hyatt in Asia, it's going to likely be at least six times nicer than the equivalent brand in the United States. It just seems to be the way that it often is abroad. So I'm not sure that comparatively, they're that much better than anyone else. But I think a lot of them are nice overseas. You're right, though, that I do probably make too much about breakfast. Now, I say that as somebody who for years traveled without elite status, didn't get free breakfast at the hotel, always went out to breakfast. And I'm a happy enough guy with Waffle House or, you know, sausage and muffin at McDonald's. So I'm not a particularly picky breakfast eater. However, I got to say that now that I've gotten used to getting breakfast

for free with elite status, it's nice being able to just walk downstairs to the lobby and get breakfast, you know, not have to like go hunt it out and being able to just walk downstairs to the lobby and get breakfast, you know, not have to like go hunt it out and figure out where we're going to eat and take a look at the menu and get there with our, you know, especially now that I'm traveling with the baby to get there with our son and then, you know, diaper change or this or that. And as soon as you get there kind of a thing, it's nice when you're in the hotel and you can walk back up and retreat to the room if you need to. You know, and I like to have that to be able to walk back up to the room, not have to bring everything with me to go out for the day. I can go down and eat breakfast, go back to the room, get ready for the day, and then leave. So that has suited my style more.

I don't know. What do you think? It sounds like you agree. Yeah. No, I mean, I agree. I really do appreciate free breakfast. And it's true. I mean, we could always choose to pay for it and right

and and still get it but a lot of these nice hotels that we choose to stay at with our points tend to also charge an exorbitant amount for that breakfast so uh so then yeah it's just my travel so i like to i like to have breakfast in the hotel so you go back to the room and finish getting ready for the day after eating right and that's that's, that's my style. And so it's very convenient to stay in the hotel. Yeah. It's, it's a lot more than the price tag of breakfast to me. It's like, you know, I get the breakfast is cheap and I can get a cheap breakfast anywhere. I can't get as convenient a breakfast if I go somewhere else as being in the hotel. So, uh, now, all right. Now thought, thought question for you. I'm not sure where I stand on this off the top of my head,

but if you could have IHG do one of two things, one, add free breakfast for platinum elites or higher, or two, waive resort fees on awards days, which would you pick? You're in charge of the IHG program just for today. I would, that's a very good question. I guess it comes down to, you know, I don't really have a good sense of what IHG's resort fees are

because I'm not sure I've ever stayed at an IHG resort. Maybe I have somewhere along the way, but so I'm not really sure if they would have, I guess they don't have them on award stays, but they must have them on paid stays i don't have any sense no i actually does have does charge resort fees on awards day well you're right the kimpton does it's hotel by hotel i think though isn't it well i'm assuming any i think it's the case that any ihg that has a resort fee i think they do charge it. It could be awards day. That's my understanding. Yeah. So that's a great question, because I'm struggling with it. Because I say, okay, well,

if I say that I'd rather have free breakfast, then it's free breakfast costing me 40 bucks a day, because if it is, I wasn't paying that before when it wasn't included. So why would I pay it now? Right. So I guess I take the free resort fees. I don't stay at as many resorts, although now that I have a family and our son's growing, I see more resorts in the future. I don't know. All right, just back up. I'm not talking. So don't be yourself. Don't be like, what's better for you? It's more you're running the program. Oh, I'm running the program. Which choice? Yeah. Which choice is going to get your people, your members more loyal? That's the goal, right? I think free breakfast. I think it definitely,

I think it moves the needle for more people than it doesn't. It's been a consistent benefit in a lot of programs and it adds to the relaxation of vacation. And I have to think that when people are having breakfast on property, they're spending a little bit more time on property, there's more of a chance that they're going to spend money on other types of incidentals around the property. So I have to think that that probably is also a decent driver for the hotel in general. So I would think that free breakfast is worth giving, but you know, IHC doesn't employ me, and they've obviously decided that I'm wrong. There are definitely nice IHGs.

Tony, I apologize if I talked down on IHG. There are definitely good places, and there are good values to be had. I've used my points for good value in a number of spots over the years. I like a lounge access, though, and or a free breakfast. I do, too, but I think if I was running the program, I think I would add

waiving resort and destination fees for members redeeming points just because, so, you know, the whole point thing is like, you're a loyal member, now you get to enjoy a free stay and it doesn't feel free

when you've got to fork over 40 to 60 bucks or so. Yeah, I agree with that. You're right in that regard i look at it i guess and i say that i feel like i'm thinking there's so many different types of stays though not all of them are resorts though i argued last week that probably most people redeeming ihd points are at resorts didn't i so well you know but but these hotels don't limit resort fees to resorts anymore. They now have destination fees and things. So I don't know how many IHD properties have them, but I bet most intercontinentals have started adding them.

But that's just a guess. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. It's nice IHD stay, I guess, that wasn't a Kempton. So. All right. So we just gave IHD a bunch of free press.

All right. There you go. Good job, IHD a bunch of free press. All right. There you go. Good job. IHD. Tony helped you out. Thank Tony. Send Tony your bill. Okay. So are you ready for the next segment? The next regular segment. The next regular segment is what crazy thing did city do this week? Greg? Yeah. What has city been up to? They disappointed us last week, but this week I Greg, what has Citi been up to? They disappointed us last week,

but this week I don't think we're as disappointed, right? No, no. Well, so this one's sort of a flashback to a couple of weeks ago where we laughed about how they finally sent out the emails about their summer promotions. Starting June 1st. June 2nd, by the way. I don't know why not June 1st. Sorry. Hottest 1st. June 2nd, by the way. I don't know why I'm not June 1st.

Sorry. Hottest thing ever, June 2nd. June 2nd. You know, the Premier got 3X at grocery and the Prestige had a 5X bonus. And I can't remember all the things. But anyway. Things like that.

We were laughing about how they waited like two or three weeks before emailing their members about it. So in the last couple days it was two days ago my wife and i got our letters in the mail with right on the outside of the letter we didn't have to open it it said beginning june 2nd here's what you get and uh so there was one a month ago one for the premier card and one for the prestige. So it's, it is kind of hilarious.

A month later. Yeah. Yeah. Did they not want any press on that? I mean, come on city. You did it early to make card members happy. How are you going to not let anybody know for a month?

No, it might be. They did it to get on our show. Maybe bus happy. Maybe they said, you know what? We can send out one mailing. We get a discount from the post office

and we're going to get ourselves at least six or seven minutes on Frequent Mile Around the Air this week. Right, right. I bet that's it. It might have been it. You know, I think that they were trying to double their results here.

I think they were trying to double up because that's not the only crazy thing that Citi did this week. So Citi's up with a double feature, Greg. There's more. it's like going to the drive-in two for the cost of one okay all right this has sounded good what what crazy other thing did city do this week so the crazy other thing that city did was regular readers might remember around that same time ish i don't know it was in may and june whatever day it was

that city's pr team had emailed us and lots of other bloggers to let us know about some of their COVID enhancements, one of which, in fact, this was when they announced those other things to the bloggers well ahead of the cardholders. They let us know that they were going to be extending the time frame to meet the minimum spending requirement by three months for people who had applied between point A and point B, whenever those times were. And so they let us know that they were extending the timeframe for people to meet the spend and that fits in with what other people are doing. And that actually is the one logical thing to send to bloggers.

If you're not going to inform your cardholders, because they're not cardholders yet, presumably, they're trying to get new cardholders. Right. Yeah, right. So it makes a little sense to send that information to bloggers exactly it does because these are the people that write about the card so they can let the people know and the people can make those decisions and say oh okay great then i can sign up for this card there was nothing surprising about that announcement because all the the other major banks had done the same already right right right so it was just like monkey see, monkey do. They were catching up with everybody else, basically.

Right, right. Everybody's been doing. Okay. Except that there was a post written this week on another blog called Grab a Mile. And the author of that blog ran into a problem because he had, he or she, I'm not sure, had expected that they were going to have

the extra three months. And the short version of the long story is they called Citi's customer service, and nobody seems to have any idea what they're talking about in terms of this three-month extension. They called and spoke to an agent, spoke to a supervisor, talked to four or five different people, two hours on the phone, and everybody said, no, there's been no extension. I have no idea what you're talking about. All right. So wait a minute.

Let me just ask for a little clarification on that. So I'm not at all surprised that none of the agents or anyone on the phone knew about it. But didn't he or she get the points anyway for finishing the spend late or no? Well, I think after these hours on the phone and the phone calls they said that eventually they got offered a thousand thank you points for the trouble so uh so they had they had to fight for it and i think that they might have gotten it to be honest with you i don't remember the detail so i mean i was just asking because it's like it would be very typical of city to code it to go an extra six months, tell the bloggers, but not tell anybody who ever answers a phone under any circumstances.

That's true. That would seem to make sense. I saw here was like, this is this is totally crazy. Because one of the things that I know that they talked about in the post is that they went looking for some sort of official press release from Citi explaining that they have extended things by three months, because that's pretty typical for a lot of issuers. You know, I don't know if they still have it. But for a long time, if you went to Amex's website, there was a link right up at the top about what they're doing with COVID-19 and how they're extending the spending requirement timeframe and all the rest of that. But Citi didn't do that. And right at the beginning, when we published, people asked us where they could find information about that. And I had reached back out right back at the beginning to the PR team. And they said, well,

it's not on a website anywhere yet, but you know, probably will be soon. And so here we are, like, two months later later and it's still not out there and so so all that totally sucks if if it actually means people aren't getting their signup bonuses when they expect to right hopefully that's not the case but it sounds like it might be we we don't really know we don't really know we don't really know we're looking to follow up and get an answer on that and see if we can get something yeah regardless it absolutely fits in the crazy thing that Citi did. It does. Man, Citi, you have to act together. It just doesn't.

How are you going to email the blogging team and not email your customer service team and let them know what's going on at the same time? It's just, it doesn't make any sense. Right. Well, you know, it's PR that emails us. Like, they did their job. They did. They got out the, you know,

it's someone higher up ought to be like have someone else who has a job to inform their own people right right right not a lot of cross communication going on between departments there which again isn't surprising but that doesn't make it any less crazy no no not at all that's it's the kind of thing that with any big business, you see this kind of thing happen occasionally. It's just we see it all the time. We do. Sad. All right. Yeah. Let's get into not yet the main topic, but there's a few deals or bonuses that I want to talk about. The big news this week is Chase, for their Sapphire cards,

brought out new bonuses. So you might remember that they had a bunch of, they had grocery bonuses for several months that ended end of June, except for their Marriott cards, which I think have another month in them, I think. Yeah, that's right. And so they brought out new spend bonuses with different categories. And these are kind of interesting. So if you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve, you're getting 5x for any Instacart spend, plus $50 credit,, if you get an Instacart membership, if you spend that money towards Instacart membership or monthly or annual you have the same kind of thing with the Sapphire preferred,

but three X instead of five X, but you still get the $50 credit. So either way you could either get three months of monthly Instacart, or you could get about half off an annual membership. Right, and that Instacart Express membership gives you, I think it's no delivery fee, and then a reduction. And a discount, yeah. What I'm not sure about yet

is whether prices are inflated over if you show up at the store so is the discount and i bet this is true because that was when i looked into shipped way back when um which is a similar service you know i found that everything in the store was marked up about 12 so if you're getting a discount it's probably just bringing it down a little bit. But nevertheless, if you're wanting to order groceries, this is... For delivery, this is a great deal. Gas.

So Sapphire Reserve gets 5x for gas, and Sapphire Preferred gets 3x. Up to $1,500 spend during the three months of this promotion. All these promotions go until the end of September. And then we have 10x for streaming services for Sapphire Reserve

or 5x for the Sapphire Preferred. So that one, as you posted about, not as exciting because who spends a lot on streaming? Well, I'll tell you who does. So YouTube TV is what I used to cut the cord about a year ago. And I think when I cut the cord, I think YouTube TV was like 35 bucks or something like that. It quickly moved up to 45 or 50 or something.

And now it's just moved up again to, I can't remember what they moved it up to 45 or 50 or something. And now it's just moved up again to, I can't remember what they moved it up to, but so, so anyway, so if it counts as streaming, I don't know if it does with Sapphire, with Chase, then that would be a nice multiple.

But right now I'm getting the $20 back a month. Thanks to my platinum card streaming. So I probably, I probably won't. I probably could figure out a way to split the bill and pay some with one and some with the other, but I probably won't bother. I don't bother with that, yeah. Not for the small win.

And for most of us who aren't using YouTube TV, you know, it's how much of a difference is it going to make? Maybe you'll get some people signing up for Disney+, because Hamilton comes out tomorrow on Disney+, I think. So maybe some of you is it going to make? Maybe you'll get some people signing up for Disney Plus because Hamilton comes out tomorrow on Disney Plus, I think. So maybe some of you folks are going to sign up for a year-long Disney Plus to be able to see that. That's like 70 bucks, 700 points. Okay, maybe.

But if you're paying like 10 bucks a month or 15 bucks a month for Spotify or Pandora's, who cares? Right, it's not going to come up to a lot of points. Like 70 cents worth of points or something. But the Instacart and gas, those can be pretty significant. Definitely. And so I think that's pretty... Do those make the Sapphire Reserve more compelling?

My renewal comes up in September. Should those categories make me want to renew? Do you think that those are enough to kind of fill the gap now, especially now, considering the fact that the fee is higher? Of course, I think to the end of the year here, they're actually only in charge 450, right for renewals. So right, right. So yeah, right. I mean, it's, it's, it's a great question. I mean, I think they they had already made some changes that made it so that like for example making it easier to get the 300 travel credit if you weren't traveling at all um they they had already made some changes to make the card compelling enough i think that it

was like if you if you weren't planning on canceling it back when travel was a thing you know you probably don't want to cancel it now is my thought so so the so the real question i think is like if you were planning to cancel because you had you had done the math you said it's not really worth it going forward has this moved the needle now i don't know that i could say it does because it's only a three-month promotion right like right if they had these categories all the time well of course that would be pretty awesome of course of course but so two things on that first of all now this is a second go at giving some increased category bonuses is this going to become a regular thing where they have some rotating categories?

I don't know, but it certainly makes me want to know if they're going to do another one after September 30th. So, you know, that intrigues me to want to keep it even if my renewal was coming up. That's an interesting point. Good point. Yeah, I mean, you might be able to wait till the end of September.

Now, Chase seems to be pretty good about making sure that the announcements go out and are actually somewhere visible that people can look up. Right, right. See what, like they actually have a page online now where you could see all- You might want to go to chase.com city and take a look at how this works there. I'm just saying. They've got it down. Yeah. So i would i mean if i were you if i was thinking of canceling in september i'd wait and see what promotion they run no i do i'm definitely gonna keep it now and there's a couple of reasons so number one you're right it is short

term but i look at it and say okay well gas we're talking it's an extra 2x over what I would get on the Premier. I'd get 3x on my Premier at gas stations. And I would rather have five ultimate rewards points than three thank you points all day long. So, you know, look at that. And okay, that's going to be really easy for me to use because I live in upstate New York, where I noted in the posts, there's a gas station with gift to college cards and I was already planning on setting up a 529 for our son that's going to be born in September so this is perfect because I'm going to be able to pick up that $1,500 and give to college cards get 7,500 points while I was doing something I was already going to do so those points to me are a valuable reason to stick

around because to me that's you know easily $100. Now, really, I guess it's only about 3000 more net points. Yeah. So, so, you know, then maybe you only want to value it at 50 or 60 years, $45, something like that. If you're going to cash them out. Right. Right. If you're going to cash them out 45. So that that's a decent little incentive. Now the Instacart thing also interests me now you can't get i'm surprised yeah okay yeah because i was gonna say i i didn't think i thought you live so far out nowhere that that there's no insta like instacart is not even a uh like a noodle in someone's mind out there there's no instacart in my town but about 30 miles away there is instacart where we have uh my wife's sister lives about 30 miles away that does have it and away there is instacart where we have uh my wife's sister lives about 30

miles away that does have it and she shops for instacart so we did at one point have an instacart delivery to her house she didn't come up for her for some reason when she was looking through order pickups we were thinking she'd probably do the shopping but uh but at any rate we had something delivered to her house because she was coming over here to bring something else to us and she could bring the groceries easily right so we did that once because it was coming over here to bring something else to us and she can bring the groceries easily right so we did that once because it was convenient right pandemic now though now what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use the sapphire reserve and get that three month monthly membership ten bucks a month get that money back to have no delivery fees and I'm gonna stack it because I'm gonna use

my sofa a money card to pay for the groceries because as you may have seen last night so if I money is offering 10% back on Instacart. Right. So now if I get that 10% back, now we're getting to the point where, okay, the convenience factor is high enough. So you're getting, so you're getting, it's not a lot more. I mean, so, so if you think of the 5X back as like seven and a half percent back, right? Right.

Then the, the SoFi money deal is yeah it's better but it's not like yeah like hugely but but well no no it's still it's still good you're right it's not hugely better than the 5x but it's it's a little bit better than the 5x to me and if i didn't use the reserve if i didn't have the reserve i wouldn't be doing the instacart even at the 10 back because i'd be paying the delivery fee too. And are you factoring in the tip in your sister-in-law? Well, right. So that's definitely something that you got to factor in because you do have to tip and there's going to be some service fee still. And that's where I said, to me, it brings Instacart, the convenience factor of Instacart within the realm of reasonable. If I'm going to get 10% back

and I'm not going to pay a delivery fee, then okay, yes, I am going to pay a tip. It's worth something to me to pay somebody else to go to the grocery store. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know what, just yesterday, so we realized we forgot to buy some things at the grocery store that we went to two days ago and this deal had just kicked in. So I signed up, I actually did the year membership because I figured I'd probably use it a lot. And yeah, boom. In a couple hours, the stuff was here. So it was great. Yeah, that's nice. And that won't be quite as convenient for me, but it'll be convenient enough.

And the thing of it is, I live in a very small town. So there's one grocery store for 20 miles in any direction or something. So something crazy like that. And one day, just an odd benchmark but i remember i was buying yeast to make bread and i went to my local grocery store and i had bought some recently at the walmart that's like 30 miles away and i went to the store here and i was like wow it is literally three times as expensive for the same product here as it was 30 miles away so even if i pay a little markup on the products the internet i don't have to drive there to go get them, and I pay less than I do in my town So yeah, so I'm in I think chase this is smart chase

I think the the 5x groceries already I got value out of that because I was also lucky that my Walmart that mole mart is 30 miles away Coded at 5x during that grocery promotion. So that was awesome. I was happy to have that I loaded up on some gift cards that I could add to Walmart pay on the phone for future shopping trips to be able to max that out. So that was good. This is nice. And I'm looking forward to seeing what you're going to come out with in September. And and don't forget that you are so we sort of alluded to this, but they added the pay yourself back feature where you can actually cash out points at one and a half. And the website sort of suggests that there might be new categories in the future. And so that's another exciting potential development if they keep the one and

a half value and add some different categories going. I mean, I'm happy with categories they have, but... Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, you know, it seems kind of interesting just in the academic sense but on the flip side i'm like how much more valuable can it get than the current categories right i mean there's nothing i'm going to be more excited about at one and a half cents is there um no but it'll be nice like in the future when travel resumes it would be awesome i think if if they actually did this for travel so that you have wherever you still it's still an awesome card to use to pay for travel and you can actually just, so,

you know, get the one and a half value. So paying directly through the portal, I think that'd be a great combination. That would be, that's sort of the more longterm post COVID approach that I'm hoping for. That's true. That's all good points.

And the Sapphire preferred, I think right now becomes a little bit more interesting because it's always a little bit better move to apply for that card than the sapphire reserve initially because the welcome bonus is higher so it's it's often worth considering the sapphire preferred if you have neither and you're eligible and now not only will that be appealing for the increased welcome bonus but you get some decent bonus categories too. So if you're put off by the high annual fee on the Sapphire Reserve, but you want to get a Sapphire card, I feel like this at least enhances the Sapphire Preferred. It's not nearly as good as

the Reserve, but it definitely is a nice enhancement. And it was a surprise to me that they added the $50 credit for the Sapphire Preferred. I did not expect to see that. I didn't either. I did double take and I read it twice because I said, really, they're giving the same amount of credit on the Sapphire preferred. I mean, that's for a $95 annual fee card. That's pretty terrific. If you're an Instacart person at all, if you are already ordering from Instacart, that's great on your $95 annual fee card, right? Yeah, it's terrific. So I just realized we were sort of inadvertently doing a commercial for Chase here. And I absolutely did not mean to do that. But I think maybe we could send them a bill for the ad and just see what happens.

I mean, if it was Citibank, they'd probably just pay it not knowing that they had to. Right. But. So true. Let's give that a try. So we'll get that in place. Our accounts receivable person to work on that. Okay.

So, all right, Chase, your commercial time is done now. All right. If you'd like more time, you can make sure to send those checks a little bit faster. That's right. Or start applying for cards through our site. Want to support the site. Thanks, Chase. We have hardly any affiliate links right now.

We do have a couple of nice, we do have a couple of nice Amex Hilton cards that you can sign up for. I think they're perfect for you. Everybody who works for Chase. So now, now that we just pumped up Hilton, we should talk about Radisson. That's right. Because Hilton makes you think Radisson. That's the next thing. That's the next thing on my mind. If we talk about Hilton, I always think about Radisson. Cause it's like right, right there, right there, right there, right there.

Neck and neck in every way. So, so Radisson tossed out a promotion this week. And so the promotion they tossed out here is 5 000 points per stay right is that is that what it is like paid stay is it just paid an award i don't think so it seems to be any stay under any almost any condition so it seems like you could book i mean if if one exists in the u.s which i guess i don't a 9 000 a night uh room like paid 9 000 points to stay there and then uh get back 5 000 so you can actually stay at radisons wherever those exist at the category one ones uh for only 4 000 net which is pretty incredible not bad i mean i the last i looked i haven't looked at this in a long time the last

i looked most of the category one radisons i think were in india and they definitely seem nicer to me than the $3 a night place with the straw mattress. Okay, so you don't think the Radisson has straw mattresses? Probably not. They're probably at least as good as the Holiday Inn Jaipur, I think. So it might be very nice. Of course, they're probably dirt cheap with cash too. Well, I'm only saying probably because I don't really know. They might not be, but yeah, so you're probably also inexpensive with cash. But 4,000 points a night, I mean, come on. We, what a reasonable redemption value of those points

is like less than half a cent each. I think we have it at what, 0.44 or something like that. So if you pay 4,000 points, it's like, you know, 16 or $17 worth of points. Yeah, I mean, that would be a terrific deal if you- It's very, very cheap. Now it doesn't compare... So long ago, when it was called Club Carlson, the rewards program,

they did a promotion where they actually had Category 1 hotels in the U.S. They did a promotion where they gave you 9,000 points. And so people were able to actually stay for free. And that was pretty amazing. This is not that, but then again, we haven't seen anything like those early clip Carlson promotions. No.

Any years. I kind of, I had predicted it when this whole COVID thing started that we might start to see that level. This is not that, but it's, I was going to say, is this what you had in mind,

Greg? Cause if it is, I'm disappointed. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, Greg? Because if it is, I'm disappointed. No, yeah. I mean, it's exciting because it's more than any other chain has done so far, I think, as far as a promotion that works everywhere and that's kind of gameable and that you can do one-night stays, right, and earn it, and you don't have to stay.

It doesn't kick in on the second stay steven wrote about ways steven wrote about ways that you can get extra points like apparently there's a way to go through the united app and get extra points when booking the radisson and then you get these points and so you could stack a lot of things here it's true it's true so there is some stacking and certainly if you're paying for the nights you have the radisson card it's true it's true so there is some stacking and certainly if you're paying for the nights you have the radisson card it's like you know i know that when they run these promotions yeah you could get a huge number of points tons and tons of points right lots of points points all day long so is it worth going out there and finding a cheap radisson to kind of run this to pick up 5 000 points at a time because i mean it's not just the 5 000 you're

going to also walk out with a bucket load of points since they just seem to print them and you know like send them out all the time so right points coming I don't know what do you think is it worth going after this so so even if you could average 100 points a dollar I mean yeah 100 points a dollar that would be buying points at a penny each right right i do the math right i think so so 100x so so there's no way then so where i got to that is like so if you found a 50 stay right then the 5 000 is like 100 so i guess you could do better than 100 because you'd also earn your 10x from the credit card i don't remember what it is 15x 20x from your gold status things like that so all right so even if you're buying them even you get 200x um which i think would be a stretch but let's just say let's let's say you can work out getting 200 times,

200 points per dollar for your stay. Is it worth it? So you're buying points at half cent each. Points are not worth the half cent. I would not do it. No, no, you shouldn't. You shouldn't do it. No, no.

Nobody should. Sorry, Radisson. Yeah, if you want Radisson points, just get their credit card because it gives you 40,000. I mean, you get a signup bonus, but you also get 40,000 points every year just for paying the 85 or whatever it is.

75. 75. No, really? Okay. I think it is. I thought, all right. Maybe. It's not that much. It's not that much.

It's not that much. You get $40,000 points each year, and it's five points per dollar spent on the card. And every now and then they'll toss you some sort of bonus to get 10 points per dollar here or there or something like that. Although those are usually limited. We'll give you 10 points per dollar for the next $12.50 you spend at an electronics store in the Bronx.

Right. Those things are bad. Super exciting. No, no. But the basic value of the credit card actually is quite good. I mean, if you're going to stay in a Radisson, at least one Radisson a year in the U.S. So, you know, the card automatically is giving you five points per dollar.

And then at 15,000 points, or is it, do you remember? How many points you get the free night? So you could get up to three free nights a year. Yes, you spend $10,000 exactly for a free night up to three times. So you can spend up to 30 grand. Okay. All right. So you spend $10,000 on the card.

You're getting 50,000 points from the spend and a free night certificate. So that's like getting two free nights at many places or close to two free nights at a top end. So I think it actually has a lot of lots to be said for it if if you stay in radisson hotels i don't even or the other brands in the i don't even do that very often i did the 30 grand last year on the on the radisson car okay i said you know what there are a couple of them that are decent that are nice that i'm not traveling to now and little did i know when i did that are decent, that are nice, that I'm not traveling to now. And little did I know when I did that spend last year that I'd be doing no travel this year. But at any rate, I figured, ah, you know, I could definitely do it.

One of the places that I like, and this wasn't even mine, I got to give credit to Stefan at Rapid Travel Chai, is that place at the Mall of America, the Radisson Blu that's attached. It's right there in the mall. It's decently nice. So that's pretty convenient. I've enjoyed a couple of stays there now. that'd be great for kids right amusement park in there yeah exactly so yeah yeah we already enjoyed a couple stays there since my son has been born and probably i figured we'd go back especially now that he's getting a little bit older but of course

now the travel situation is kind of up in the air. But at any rate, I figured it was worth it because that 30K, I got 150,000 points plus those three free nights. And, you know, so I definitely there's some value in the Radisson program. And so if you're doing that and you're staying at Radisson Properties, hey, great. Pick up your 5,000 points a night. I'm not going to go out of my way to get an extra 5,000 points. I mean, that's it. Now, would you go out of your way to to use your free night certificates during the promotion time thinking that you might get the five thousand no no no

come on a thousand dollar visa gift card worth it well a thousand dollar visa gift card at cinema has a four dollar activation fee i can make five thousand club carlson boratisan points appear out of thin air like eight days a week so that's true cost me four dollars to generate those 5 000 points there's no way i'm gonna go out on my way to pick up extra 5 000 points those are like sitting on the pavement ready to get picked up anytime okay no all right good so points are cheap to acquire so don't uh don't get too excited about this promo i don't think so all right just my opinion hey tony feel free to call me out all right let me know next week tony why it is that i am just like sleeping on radisson okay please let us know

in the reader feedback tell me see you then uh so in the meantime i mean there there's some great there's some great uh radisson properties in europe though also that's you know there's some unfortunately you can't use those free nights or tickets there but you can use the points and the points are easy to earn all right so moving on to our main topic main topic so you wrote you wrote about um how to get to europe and stay in a hotel for two people for only two credit card signups. I did. I did. And back, I think.

And back. It wasn't just getting to Europe. No, yeah, definitely. And the timing on this post was like perfect because it was just like a couple days ago that the European Union confirmed that US citizens are not welcome. They just closed the door. Whatever the opposite of rolling out the red carpet is. That's what they do.

They like lit that red carpet on fire. So Nick sees that news and like, and it's like, I know what it's time to write about. Time to write about how to get a free trip to Europe, guys. I got a free trip to Europe just for you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So timing was impeccable on that post. It's absolutely. But but my my, my thought when I wrote it was, okay, obviously, not going to Europe today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month. Who knows if you'd be able to go this year

at all. But I was writing from the perspective of someone who is thinking about going someday, exactly. And if you were already planning to go, you probably already had the points to go. But if you're thinking about it as a someday thing, you might want to figure out what it is you should collect, right? So wrote a post explaining how you could get one credit card, cover economy class flights for two people, and then get one more credit card

and get yourself as many as four or five or maybe even more free nights in a hotel in Europe. So really a nearly free European vacation, you're going to pay taxes and stuff on the flights, of course, maybe some resort fees, etc. So there's gonna be some small expenditures, but pretty close to free anyway, with two credit cards or in business class, one person, again, one person opens two credit cards, they get themselves a business class flight and a hotel. Now, regular readers and listeners will probably already have ideas about how you could do that. But I'm sure that you probably know a number of people who don't know how to do that.

So I was writing this post hoping that those people who are a little bit newer to the game that perhaps have just been redeeming points towards paid tickets and stuff like that would have some new ideas to work with. However, all that said, it didn't take off in popularity. So I don't know that it was a post that resonated with everyone. So So that makes me wonder, and I think it probably makes you wonder, are people planning travel right now? I mean, we see availability and stuff like that. Are you planning international travel? Are you looking to the future and saying, Okay, now's the time to book? Or are you like kicking back and waiting what's on your mind yeah yeah uh i mean in general so i you know a popular post i wrote and then rewrote was the one about uh the top first class products in the world and that did do very well and it was about like the title was something like um book now for

travel next year uh and that did well but but i don't know i didn't actually book any of those things i mean it was very exciting finding whoa two people can go on these incredible first class products here here and there and there was quite a lot available yet i didn't book a thing you didn't book any of it right why not i don't know it's hard right like when when when you can't make it or i don't know maybe when it's like so much is unknown about what we're going to be able to do next year um i have trouble getting to the point where it's like it's time to pull the trigger which is which is kind of silly because at least some of these programs are making easier than ever if you book now to make changes if you need to. Right. So I really should,

but it seems like, but I'm wondering if this is a general malaise, you know, it's not just me, but are a lot of people having this issue? You don't think it is? No, I don't think it is just you because I look at it and I,

and specifically, no, I don't think it's just you. I think specifically when I look at that example, you mentioned, so when we say it posted, well, we're saying in terms of getting a lot of viewers, a lot of people who have looked at it.

We can take a look and see what are people reading, what are they interested in. And I think it's really interesting when you look at the fact that that post you wrote about the first-class flights got a lot of interest, a lot of people looking at it. In the post I wrote about how to get to Europe and two credit cards, not as much. And I think what that tells me is that there are a lot of other people like you and I out there, we're kind of excited and interested and ready to click around and look and be like, wow, two people could fly in first class, this is this would be an incredible trip. But none of us are out there booking it. That's why those two seats are still there. Because none of us are actually booking it. We're just kind of having fun looking at it. And it's

not as much fun to be like wow look two of us could go on economy class on a trip that we can't take it's not it's not nearly as exciting so i don't think anybody i say anybody i don't think most people are actively looking to book anything right now so i think that right that's why i see the difference right okay so so let's say that's a given and and i I know that that's not true universally. I'm sure there's people that are listening to this saying, wait a minute, I did book that, or I am booking. Of course.

Fine, we know you're there, we know that. But we're generalizing from a very small number of data points and saying we think that more people are like this than not, and it's just our guess. But anyway, I'm thinking that good advice is to, there's sort of two pieces in the plan now. One is acquiring the points and miles now. The other piece is actually booking the awards now. And I think there's a lot to be said

to argue for both of those things. So acquiring the points and miles now, transferable points. We've talked about this a million times that like if there's low hanging fruit to acquire them now, I think you should do it because they're so flexible. You can, you know, when time comes to book, you could be looking at star Alliance flights or one world or sky team and other partnerships and things that, that exist and potentially get an unbelievable trip out of points that you

don't really know what you're going to use them for today. Also hotel points, like if you know you're likely to stay, like getting Marriott points or Hilton points or IHG points isn't really locking you in that much because they have so many properties worldwide that, you know, you know you're going to be able to do something good with them probably. So i wouldn't say the same thing necessarily about like specific miles like i wouldn't go out of my way right now to get delta miles or american or united um because well first of all uh they don't necessarily have the greatest sweet spots anymore american still has has some, but also just because if the alternatives, the transferable points are just so much better, right?

So there's two pieces. There's the, should people, let me, I sort of gave my answer, but what do you think? Should people be on the acquiring points and miles phase right now? Even if they're not ready to book anything. Definitely.

Now that I firmly believe, and I don't firmly believe it because I'm a blogger who writes about credit cards. I believe it because now is a great time to save up, you know, to be able to, it's just like saving for a rainy day, you know, Aesop's fable, the ant in the grass,

or whatever the one that's like, you know, preparing for the winter kind of a thing. You know, the winter is coming. It's time to get ready. You know, you got to, you know, pull together your points now. So I definitely think it's worth getting points and being strategic about it and saying, okay, this offer is increased or I need to diversify or broaden or add more to this pool or that pool.

You know, we did a card talk episode this week, where we kind of helped guide someone towards transferable points that would fit for her trip goals, but the specific types of trips that she was looking to take. And I think that it's a great time to set those goals and say, okay, yeah, I think I do want to go to Europe. I don't know if right now, I don't know if it's going to be this year, next year, the year after three years from now, but maybe I should start collecting some points for a trip to Europe that's going to happen in the future. I think it'd be a great time to pick them up now and get going on that. So definitely, I think acquiring makes a ton of sense right now. Because it'll be one of those rare times where you won't be tempted to use them anytime soon. So you'll be able to acquire

them up to a point where you'll have a more meaningful number of points. All right, good. So pause there.'m gonna i'm gonna ask you later about whether it's time to book those awards now if you have the points but first i want to take a diversion we meant to talk about the card talk series yeah earlier and i totally forgot about it um so yeah so so card talk new series we had done a sort of beta episode of it a couple months ago. Uh, in that episode, we talked to Jim who had like dozens of credit cards and we were able to

help him go through his list, cut out about $3,000 if I remember right of, uh, annual fees. And he's as happy as a clam about that. Now what we're doing is every other week, we're doing a card talk with a reader. And this past week, we met with someone who she has family of six that she travels with. And she had done quite a bit of point accumulations and stuff in the past and had just sort of needed some guidance on what to do now, how to take things to the next step.

And, and we helped her, um, do a number of things, figure out how to keep getting Southwest companion passes. So how to sort of set up a pattern of, of getting that in an ongoing way, how to keep increasing her chase points. So she already has some ultimate rewards. There's some kind of low hanging fruit there for her to, to acquire more. And finally we recommended that she jump into Amex membership rewards, and we showed her how to do that and gave her some tips there.

So this is meant mostly to be sort of an advertisement for our series because just like your post didn't do that well about getting to Europe, the post that I wrote about our first or second card talk episode, not a lot of traction yet, but there's a lot of good information there, both in the post and in the video. I think you're missing out if you don't take a look. Particularly the section where we talked about membership rewards

and why we thought that that would be a wise move for her and how to go about doing it. I think that the information in there was totally worth going back and checking that out and seeing. So there's definitely some good stuff there. Yeah. And there's some stuff in the video, I think that maybe didn't make it to the posts as well. That like, I just realized as you were talking that I remember us talking about why she needs to be a employee on each of her family's membership awards, business cards, or at least

from each family member so that she can get the points into her loyalty accounts. And that's a nuance that a lot of people are going to miss. And it's very important when planning with a family to open cards. So anyway, check that out. Now back to the main topic about travel. Okay, so we both agree. We agree. Time to collect. We both agree.

Time to collect. And if we were saying it as bloggers, we'd be really, really stupid bloggers because right now we don't have that many affiliate links. It's about time for us for you to collect points. That's right. The banks have pulled out most of their affiliate uh marketing campaigns and so we don't get paid for a lot of the cards that that are good to get right now so we're saying it because we believe it um the the one exception i

guess uh is the chase or business cards in general are harder to get approval for. Chase in particular seems to be really hard to get. If you go for a Chase business card, I would go for one of the no-fee ones, Ink Business Cash or Ink Business Unlimited. Both of those have 50K offers, and I say that because they've always been easier to get than the 100K business preferred offer. And so theoretically, you know, it's still easier. It might be harder than usual, but it should be, keep getting points. This is a good time to do that. What about booking?

So I mentioned some programs have waived their change fees, right? Like if you book before the end of X, where X varies by airline. In some cases, I don't know, are some over? Like I know Delta pushed out to the end of July. Might be, I haven't double checked. Maybe too late with some of them, I don't know if some are some over like i know delta pushed out to the end of july might be i haven't double checked maybe too late with some of them i don't know it might be but let's suppose for a second that it is that you've got flexibility is it a good time to book now and and you know i i get the award alerts too i'm straight to the points spencer howard's award alert service so i get award alerts from him and often see them when there's four seats available here,

six seats available there. And, and I'm constantly looking for different posts at availability to see what's out there. So I definitely see a lot of availability. I think it's a horrible time to book. Really? I do.

I mean, it's great in the one sense that I say, Oh, well it's easy for me right now to get the three seats in business class that I'll need. And goodness knows that's not usually easy. So there's definitely part of me that's like, oh, man, I should be booking my trips for next year. But the other part of me says no. And there's a few reasons.

Number one, I don't want to transfer points from a transferable currency to an airline and get them stuck in that airline if the trip can't happen. Good point. So like Iberia, hey, it's great. They got 34,000 point business class seats from JFK to Madrid. I'd be happy to go to Spain. And if I can get three seats in business class, that sounds pretty awesome to me for 34,000 points each. What doesn't sound awesome to me is not being able to take that trip and being stuck with 100,000 Iberia points that are no longer transferable back to Amex or something. Right. So that doesn't excite me as much. So probably not, I would say for that.

And part of the reason I say that is I know that this whole COVID thing is going to be behind us at some point. I look forward to when that time is. And I know things are already starting to reopen and blah, blah, blah. In some areas, we're seeing spikes and so on and so forth. But I say, okay, today is July 2nd. Six months ago, it is July 2nd. Six months ago is February 2nd. Six months ago, this was like not even on anybody's radar. Like this was like the world has

changed in six months in so many ways. Absolutely has. The thought that Americans wouldn't be able to go to Europe, that Europe would say, no thanks, Americans, stay home. Like if you told me on February 2nd, that was going to happen, come on on who would have believed it or really January 2nd was six months ago right now whatever it was I don't know I can't do date math nobody nobody would have believed it yeah it's great it's it's a crazy world I have no idea what the world is gonna be like six or eight months from now like I can guess and I can hope I have big hopes that things will be back to normal and they might be,

but I sure as heck don't know well enough to lock my points into a single program. Now, if I already had 100,000 Iberia points, because my trip got canceled. What if you already... Maybe that. Go ahead. Okay.

Yeah. That's what I was going to ask you next is a lot of us are in that situation. We have points we already transferred over. Those flights got canceled. Now we've got hundreds of thousands of points in various programs tied up. Then yes.

Book now? Then yes, absolutely. Book now because- Because the award space is there. Award space is there, definitely. If you're in that situation, if I were in the situation where I already had the points in an airline program

because I had a trip and I couldn't take it or whatever, or I just have a lot of points in one of those programs, then definitely, yes, I would be much more likely to book that because you're not going to probably see this much availability in premium cabins. Certainly, you're not going to see it once things return to normal. So you're going to have to be on the front end of booking before things are normal. And you'll be predicting the future a little bit if you want to be able to get multiple people in premium cabins. So we're on just the desirable routes and times. So I do think it's a good time to book. I just don't think it's a good time to transfer from transferable currencies. So let me modify my

answer. Great time to book if you've got points in an airline program, terrible time to transfer points from a transferable currency. I that that's that's a great nuance um so and and also i'm going to point out that when you book now there's a bit of a mystery bag involved in what you're actually going to get so so assuming the flight actually goes at all and and what i'm saying is like whatever aircraft is on the schedule right now to fly whatever route you pick. Who knows? It's very unlikely to be the aircraft that is actually flying that route if that route flies. I mean, I don't know if very unlikely is the right word. But, you know, there's a good chance.

There's very little chance that you can have any confidence in whether or not it's going to. Right. You do not have any confidence. Who knows? And that could be good or bad. So one good thing I'm expecting is Delta. So if you're thinking of flying – so let me back up. Delta has a bunch of A350s. That's the brand-new top of the line with those suites.

The business class are enclosed suites. And most of them, not all of them, but most of them were originally flying to Asia, from the U.S. to Asia. And that's not true anymore. And it's likely that they're – oh, and they're also getting more A350s. And so before, when you flew to Europe, even in business class, it was very, very unlikely to get a suite. There was like, this may have changed, but at the time, for a while, all you had was one flight a day. And that was between Detroit and Amsterdam.

I don't know if any got added out of Atlanta, but anyway, um, now I think there's a good chance that you could book something. It's not going to say a three 50 right now, but you might get lucky and be on one of those nice ones. So yeah, there's, there's some opportunities like that, but the, the reverse can happen too, especially if you book a 777. A lot of airlines are looking to stop flying them or they're mothballing them or getting rid of them entirely because it costs a lot to operate, especially if they fly not full. So they might be keeping them on the schedule now to see if they fill up.

But if they see that they're not filling up, they're going to change it out. And you're going to be stuck with probably an inferior product over what you had hoped for. Same with A380s and any of those other large, large planes. You know, you're definitely running a risk that that's going to get downgraded to something. Now, is there a chance that one of those carriers will go to three days a week and be able to fill one of the big planes and fly one of those? Maybe, who knows? Maybe you'll get lucky and be on that flight. But the point is it's very hard to predict.

Nobody really knows what it's going to look like. And I look at airlines like Qantas that, my goodness, Australia is basically cut off from the world, right? So I think they've stopped flying their A380 period. I don't know if it'll come out of retirement or not. So there may not any longer be a Qantas first class. They might still be selling it right now, but there's at least a chance that they won't have it anymore when travel does resume. And so very hard to know what the future is going to look like in that regard. So it's a great time to gamble. If you've got points in one of the programs that maybe you'll win pretty big on a trip,

but I wouldn't transfer points right now. Right. Flying next year is like a box of chocolates. It is. You never know what you're going to get. And if you got a few hundred thousand points or miles in one particular program, hey, I mean, take a chance because you might get something good. But, you know know otherwise i just i'm not excited about it i i keep kind of theoretically getting excited and feeling like oh i should book a trip to europe and at least twice in the last week i've legitimately thought about booking a trip like may or june and then followed that thought with why do i want to tie myself down with points in one particular program when I have no idea

whether or not that trip's going to be possible. Right, right. You know, you're always kind of planning in the future. A lot of times, if you want to get the best availability, you got to book a year out. And one of the things that we always talk about is the flexibility using points and miles and how that is really an attractive thing. And so that's still attractive. It's probably even more attractive in some sense than it was before. But I feel like before, at least I had a reasonably confident feeling that I was going to take the trip. And now it's very 50-50. I just don't know. Right now, I'm right there with you. I mean, I have two, I wrote about, I have two European trips that I plan to take, want to take in, you know, in the spring and summer of 21. But I haven't booked any flights yet.

And I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen. Yeah, I mean, I think that probably realistically, my next international trip will probably be booked closer to departure because i think that i'm going to hesitate for a while here to book something far in advance but that's one of the nice things about collecting miles now that then if come next spring things seem to be good everything's open and oh look two weeks from now left tons of first classes available or you know this or that i've collected enough points where I'll be like, okay, great. I can do that now.

It's one of the times when hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of those things. I think collect now, don't book now, unless you get the miles in the program. Pretty much it. We're on the same page. When we first conceived of this whole program, this podcast and everything,

we thought we would bicker about everything. That would be our thing, right? We had planned on that. That would make it entertaining. But unfortunately. Unfortunately, we agree. We agree. Darn it.

Well, then let's move on to the question of the week because it won't necessarily. It won't necessarily – It won't – no, it's not actually something we're not going to agree about, but I think there'll be some entertainment value, at least I hope there will be. Okay. Yeah, some entertainment value. Let's put it that way. I'm intrigued.

All right. Let's go. So the question of the week is a question that I got via email from Ray a week or two ago, and Ray asked a good question, And when I read the question, I didn't know the answer, but I knew where to find the answer. And I suspect it's going to be the same for you that probably this will be something you won't know off the top of your head.

Maybe you're going to surprise me, but you're probably not going to surprise me in the sense that I bet you're going to tell me where to find the answer. And then after we answer it, we're going to move on to the question that it led me to that you're going to move on to the question that it led me to that you're going to think is ridiculous.

But I look forward to you telling me why the question is ridiculous and what I should do. All right. Now, wait, before you start. Now, last week, if I'm remembering right, you asked me a question thinking that I wouldn't know the answer off the top of my head, but I did. You did. So you may surprise me. There's no proof that it was right, but I knew an answer off the top of my head, but I did. You did. So you may surprise me. There's no proof that it was right, but I knew an answer off the top of my head.

So you may surprise me, but I'm going to put along with that the fact that we continued the what crazy thing did Citi do this week segment, even though they didn't do anything crazy last week, because we knew they weren't going to go two for two. So I'm just putting that out there. All right. That's a good point. So Greg, quick question.

Quick capital one question from Ray. See, now Greg knows why. I already don't know the answer. I know. It's capital one. I don't know anything about that. Told you I was going to win. All right.

So quick capital one question. I downgraded my venture card to a quick silver card a couple of months ago. It's been more than four years since I received the venture bonus. Am I eligible to apply for a new venture card and get the bonus? Yes. How do you know? Capital One doesn't have any rules about if you've had the card before. Look at Craig. Look at Craig. Look at him go. He is so right. I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, you know, I saw Ray's question and I looked it up. Okay. All right. So you did. You know, see? Gator, Gator. So where did you go to look that up? Because that's the type of question that readers have sometimes. How did you find the answer? I went to our best offers page and, and click to jump to Capital One and right at the

top are app tips like there are for every bank. And there it was. There you go. So that's, that's where you start with that kind of a question. You always look at our application tips, because that usually has the information that you need. Now, I had momentarily before I realized that had Googled for the answer, not Google, I take that back. I didn't Google for the answer per se. But I know that also Doctor of Credit maintains a lot of information about bankrolls. And so I know they've got a bunch of posts,

like 20 things everybody needs to know about Chase cards or Citi cards or Capital One cards. And to be fair, a lot of those app tips that we have on our best offers page link to Doctor of Credit posts. But we just have them in a place that's easy to find on that one page which is absolutely true so so that led me to doctor of credits resource and capital one cards and i saw there also of course that there is no timeline so even if you

had closed your venture card yesterday or opened it yesterday theoretically you can get the venture card again now i say theoretically capital one is notoriously harder on approvals. So you're very unlikely to get it. But it sounds like if you get approved, you'll get the bonus is typically the way it goes with Capital One. So if they approve you, you get it. But they have rules like you can only have usually two personal cards that are from Capital One. But there's a whole bunch of rules. You can check out the application rules in our post. But what was interesting and brought is going to bring me to the second question here is as I was reading Dr. Crowder's post, I saw something that I had no idea existed. He had a link in there because he mentioned that sometimes Capital One allows product changing. And this is something that came up six or seven or eight months ago here because somebody had brought that up.

Maybe we were at a conference and somebody brought up the fact that they had the ability to do a product change. And that was something that was new to us. We said, Capital One does product changes? I didn't think they did. Apparently they do, which is something that we've known for a few months already, because some people see an upgrade offer

or something like that when they log in. What I didn't know is that Doctor of Credit has a link to check for product changes. And so I clicked the link and logged into my Capital One account. Now here's my story. I have a very old Capital One card. It's one of my first, yeah, my first credit card. So I've kept that account, even though it's a horrible account. So it is a, oh no, it's a great account. Isn't that the one with your, your gift card promo?

That was my second Capital One card. So scratch what I was saying. Right. So Greg knows that I have an old Venture One card that has this really awesome gift card redemption and that's going to come into play in a second. But my old Venture One card has a weird ability to redeem like 64,000 points for a $900 Marriott gift

card. We'll keep it simple and say that. That's much better value than you'd normally get. However, the Venture One card only earns 1.25 points per dollar. So it's not particularly exciting. One more, however, my wife has a Venture card that earns two points per dollar and you can transfer points from one cardholder to another. So she transfers her Venture points to my Venture One so we can get our $900 gift card. But my oldest Capital One count is like not even like, it's a it's imagine a quicksilver you know the quicksilver card earns one and a half percent cash back right which isn't

particularly good because you can earn two percent cash back everywhere with other cards i have i have like that except it's one and a half percent cash back and it has a 39 annual fee so like the worst card you've kept it. I have. I have because some years I've called and they waived the fee and other years I've been lazy and not called it $39.

This is like my oldest account. So I want to keep it alive. And I should. Surely I should have canceled it long ago. I know. Bad decision. Confession time, guys. All right.

You get a confession. Oh, you wasted it. Wasting $39 a year. So I clicked this link from Dr. Credit to check for any product change offers. And sure enough, it says I'm eligible to product change. Because you're like, well, congratulations. You're okay to product change. These are your options.

And so I have three different options. One is I can change to the Quicksilver card, which is 1.5% cash back. No annual fee, save myself the phone call and the $39 each year. Right. The accountant tax. So that seems pretty nice. And support their,

their funny commercials. Right. Exactly. Samuel L. Jackson, you know, put a little extra money in his pocket. So,

so I can do that or I can product change to a venture one, which doesn't make any sense because I already have one of those, no annual fee, but I already have one. So venture one which doesn't make any sense because I already have one of those no annual fee but I already have one so that that doesn't make any sense to me or I can product change to a venture card for two points per dollar of course that would cost me $95 a year no signup bonus when your product changing so I'm definitely not going to get that though I'm not eligible for a signup bonus anyway because I have two Capital One accounts and have to cancel one, but we're going to try to open one anyway.

And we all know that it's difficult to get approved for one. So that's not very likely for me. So my dilemma now is do I pay $95 and get my own venture card? Now, the reason for that would be that right now to transfer my wife's points to my account, we have to, she has to call capital one and tell them she wants to transfer the points

and have her card and my card and transfer the points over to my Capital One account so that I can redeem the gift cards. Okay. It would be more convenient if I had my own venture card because then I could just move it online myself, click, and move the points over from my venture account. Gotcha. Would you then cancel hers when her next annual fee comes due?

Well, yeah, that's the question then. Then yes, it would seem to me like it would make sense to do that when hers comes due to cancel it. Is it worth the convenience factor to inconvenience myself into that entire loop of stuff? Or should I just product change

to the Quicksilver and take the no annual fee? All right. So I think the best answer is to do the venture and then for the last time ever, move all of your wife's points over to your account and then cancel her account. That's the best answer.

But if you kept alive a $39 annual fee card that gave you no benefits whatsoever for however many millions of years, then I doubt your commitment to following through on that whole process. And so you're going to end up, when I went out with two cards, you're going to end up just increasing your annual fee burden. Right. That's a risk. Right. That's a risk. Right. And so if you think that's a real risk, then no, just product change to the Quicksilver.

And if you ever want to product change to the venture, you probably can click that link again and probably do that in the future. And probably maybe do that in the future. I think that's probably good advice. So that's probably what advice so that's probably what i should do i'm tempted to do the venture to simplify because man it'd be so much easier if i could just click no i mean if you would follow through on that i think that's the right play you think you would i don't know you see and her venture card is also a very old account so really i guess what i should do is see if i can product change her venture card down to a clay art and then product change my $39 crappy horrible terrible card so that's so much better yeah because if you can move hers down to a no fee card yeah they

do that well and so here's another piece of that too that for those that are listening along and kind of finding this line of talk interesting. Something else I learned from that doctor of credit post is that it is also apparently, and I didn't look at how to do this, so I haven't done it myself, but it's also apparently possible to reallocate credit limits with Capital One for yourself online. And so that would be useful for me because this old 1.5% past $39 for the honor of not using your credit card every year credit card as a relatively low limit, but my old Venture One card has a much better limit. Ah, yeah, that's a consideration. Reallocate, then that would also potentially be advantageous and give us a higher limit on that

particular card too. Right, because the Venture One one isn't doing you any good having a high credit limit right you just need that gift card deal that's it exactly i just need the card the count nice for the gift card deal so so so this question by ray led you to this whole plethora of great information it did it did it did i think you i think you should write a post about this. I probably should. Some of that I only discovered last night. So this is kind of new. So you have an excuse for not posting about it yet.

Right, right. But you're right. That is, especially once I've done it, I think it'll make for good material. I mean, shoot, if we were short on material, probably just finding little nuggets like that in Doctor of Credit posts could keep us going for quite a while. It was a great resource.

Great, great bunch of information there, because those were some things that I just was not aware of. I feel like I know Chase and Citi and Amex inside and out. Capital One, which are like my oldest accounts. I haven't played with them. Not so much. Yeah. There hadn't been much to do with them for many many years here so there's no reason to kind of dig into this stuff now right there is

right right all those years they didn't have a transferable points currency and so we just ignored them paid 39 bucks for that terrible credit card thank you thank you capital one thank you ray thank you ray for right actually making my whole it's absolutely a lot better ray absolutely thanks to ray i love it all right on that note i think we should say goodbye what's the what's the what's today's goodbye song today's goodbye song is if you want to hear more about what we've been talking about you want to go to thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe again that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe again that's thefrequentmiler.com slash subscribe also don't forget to click the subscribe

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the description for this particular episode for links to the posts that we discussed today thank you guys very much for being out here with us take care we will see you guys again next week bye everybody see you later